For some years now, a consortium scientific International It was proposed to study in depth the behavior of the ice Antarctic.
Now, after months of work, experts managed to drill, on unprecedented scales, a specific mass of ice and the land base beneath it.
After that, he obtained more than 200 meters of sedimentwhich, according to the first indications, could reveal the past and -eventually- future behavior of the great continental mass in the face of a rise in the temperature of the Tierra.
Record drilling: a 228-meter sediment core
Since 2021, a group of scientists from different countries has sought to answer a key question: What would happen to the West Antarctic ice sheet if the planet warmed by 2°C?
The number of degrees chosen is not random: it is the limit that so terrifies the Paris Agreement, Well, overcoming it could activate irreversible processes in the Antarctic ice.
In order to find an answer, universities, laboratories and other types of organizations created the project Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet at 2 °C (SWAIS2Cfor its acronym in English).
From the end of 2025, for two months and to this end, 29 scientists, drillers and engineers from this team worked in continuous shifts in one of the most remote points of the West Antarctica: Crary Ice Rise.
A «Ice Rise» It is the part of floating ice that has solid land beneath it (a kind of underwater “mountain”).
Craryin particular, is located about 700 kilometers from the nearest scientific station, so the team had to set up a specific camp to work on it.
The objective was ambitious: drill more than half a kilometer to reach the base of the ice, and then drill a hole to discover what was underneath, which they sensed were sediments.
According to what was reported on the official SWAIS2C website, after a few days of work, the drilling group made water from snow and heated it to a temperature level that allowed it to drill 523 meters of ice.
Then, over several weeks, the researchers drilled into the sediment layer and extracted a core 228 meters long, composed of alternating layers of mud, sand and rock fragments, among other things.
According to the team’s statement, it is the longest core ever drilled under an ice sheet. This was achieved with several parts of up to three meters in length each, and thus the scientists were able to exceed their initial objective, which was to form one of 200 meters.
Melting ice: what could happen to Antarctica according to the study
Beyond the recordthe extracted core is extremely important as initial observations indicate that it includes periods of environmental change in this area during past global warming periods.
The first indications are that the registry could cover up to 23 million years old, based on the preliminary identification of marine microfossils present in some layers. That fact alone makes the core an exceptional geological archive.
As the extraction progressed, the team observed notable variability in sediment types. Some layers show typical characteristics of deposits formed under a mass of ice sitting on dry land, similar to current conditions. But others tell a different story.
At certain levels, fragments of shells and remains of marine organisms that require light to survive appeared. As the team revealed in the statement announcing the news, these findings suggest that In the past that region was not always covered by hundreds of meters of ice.
At some point, then, there were open ocean or floating shelf conditions.
The hypothesis that the region experienced major ice retreats is not new. However, until now data has mainly come from nearby marine sediments, floating platforms or ocean records in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean. This core offers for the first time a direct record from the inner margin of the ice sheet itself.
What is relevant about the recovered core is that, according to preliminary estimates, it includes periods in which the global average temperature exceeded the threshold of 2 degrees.
Now the more complex analysis begins: precisely dating each layer, reconstructing the associated oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and determining when the ice retreated and to what extent.
If it is confirmed that during warming episodes similar to what could be achieved if the temperature increases by 2 °C the ice sheet experienced substantial retreats, the message for the present would be clear, because it would mean that the continent has already shown vulnerability under thermal levels similar to those that the planet could reach in this century.
The above is the true scope of the discovery, It will help the world predict and prepare for future sea level rise.
It is not just about having recovered the longest sedimentary core under an ice sheet. It is about having, for the first time, a direct archive that can reveal how Western Antarctica responded when our planet warmed beyond the aforementioned threshold, from which it is currently still far away, but which, since the industrial era, is getting closer.
